72. Hollowing
♫ Dark Souls is a Video Game
Video Game, Video Game
Dark Souls is a Video Ga—
Don’t you dare go hollow.
The sizzle of half-white smoke
Lava that feels like lukewarm fire
Discoloured yet drinking water
Pink flesh paled by toxins
A scalp littered with bored lice
And hair that grows on it like fungus-moss
Balding, but not fully bald…
…a cake with French-imported cream
That tastes like old socks,
A funny joke told unfunnily
Laughter like rattling, clanging soda cans
Fretful four hours of sleep
And half-hearted clutching at
The years of life slipping by
Slipping… slipping…
Slipping… but still tickling numb fingers…
This is hollowing.
Hollowing is not permadeath.
Hollowing is halfness and numbness.
It is the bad ending of the game
You nonetheless completed.
It is the essence of a depleted man
Who thought, ten years past,
That he could be a Navy’s captain
And raise his mast with a lion’s pride
But today, scrubs the starboard
And washes the toilets
Of a lousy little cruise ship
(Like a cub with clipped nails)—
And bails his mind from reality
By believing he is living the dream.
Hollowing is refusing to meet loved ones
Because “I’m busy”, while
Idly scrolling YouTube Shorts.
Hollowing is the false fact that
There’s naught more to life but
SparkNoting instead of reading,
Blaming biology for big bones
And temper tantrums,
Finishing the MBA course you hated
(With distinction)
Or marrying someone you halfway tolerate
While ghosting the guy
Who made you feel something real.
It is Swiggying instead of cooking a meal,
Swapping sex with porn,
And, eventually,
Breathing your last in the same four-poster
You were born in,
While deluding yourself into thinking
That you explored all angles of life—
That the sorry parodies for reality
Which filled your entire waking hours
Was the whole point of life.
Spoiler alert: it was not.
Whether you are cold, fury-filled,
Passionate or mellow,
Don’t you dare go hollow!
For the sake of Satan, Shiva, Science
(Or whoever you call your god)
I beg thee,
Stop folding when you can gamble!
Don’t amble in the same streets!
Stop abstaining from sweetmeats!
Generate new regrets!
Be saved by different friends!
Try to make amends!
And shatter your comfort zone
Not with hesitation—
Not with a moan or a groan—
But with conviction that will
Make others freeze in their bones,
No matter how hot the weather.
Whether you lead or you follow
My advice on not being hollow
Is down to your decree.
But prithee, be careful,
And may the flames guide thee.
73. Adulting
Grenades fall. Sands rise.
A wingless cricket howls—
Soon devoured by a cat that prowls.
Beasts eat beasts. Man eats the wild.
The wild eats man. Man eats man.
Fights are dealt by force, fraud
Blood or kind—
This is not the state of the world:
This is the state of my mind.
I shovel aside the sand like Sisyphus
Chuck out the grain of grenade
Place the cricket on a ledge
Play fetch with the hissing cat
And thus retch out the vats of my brain.
But all that pain of diary-entries
And grumbling at shrinks
And forcing to think positively
Is a waste,
For the sand rises come morn.
New nades, new crickets and cats
And eternal man-upon-wild-upon-man
Resumes.
Alas, even to unwind is to rewind.
This is not the state of the world:
This is the state of my mind.
74. Furniture
*Thwack*
The last of the nails are hammered!
Now slurp shall I from apathy seas
Enamoured—
For the femme is frozen in plastic!
Her tics, tricks, toxic, terrible things
Which poisoned once-quixotic dreams
To conjure despair so unique, so exotic
Are dead, salvaged by eight pegs—
Watered wine with her dregs—
And this dull chair with four legs.
But soft! Furniture rumbles!
Out pop the nails, soaring to the ceiling
Tumbling down like metal rain!
Frowns form on the ridge
Timber melts like molten mercury
And lips smack, redder than a Howler:
“Craven!
You stood askance, slouch-kneed
To weak-kneed pleads for romance!
Turned inward like Eliot, quoth
Quixote but caged me for
Sancho, and Mused wealthy
While making whore of your deity?
“Forgive me, torn time,
Forgive me, lost petals!
You loved me when you learned I love you
Love me when it doesn’t bore you
Love me when it’s time for a wank
Then turn tail when I turn wise to the act!
“Deride my fruits of deep penance
Make mock of my independence
Then frame me femme – craft me as chair
To not taint your lair of pithy,
Masculine conscience?
Turn me human again!
Face me with wit and honesty—"
*Thwack*
She must be silenced
*Thwack*
To end mental violence
*Thwack*
Again, again
Hope for a-gain
*Thwack* *Thwack*
*Thwack*
75. Conversation Wars
I cling to my glass, my wits
As well as the eyes of all the table.
They sit hunchbacked, alert, askance,
(One or two batting a flirty eyelid)
Eyeing my tongue as I lick my lips
And drinking the dews of my flowing words
As if ’twere honey, something holy
Or some haltless homily—
For I was winning the Conversation War.
Conversation Wars are a deathly dance
Some claim it avarice, others an art
But while in trance, I call it mastery
Mastery over that universal impulse—
The desire to be heard;
The pressure to always be funny.
Only those in the trance can see the glory
In speaking with such surety about life
Or societies or hard-scenes or parties
Or the state-of-our-nation or the
Best sunset points near our location
Or clarifying what blockchains are all about
And have the words flow like the Ganges—
Be they about bliss or the abyss.
As none dared interrupt my sermon
Even when anecdotes turned to truisms
And truisms became half-truths,
’Twas then when it struck me:
The aim of life is not that dream job
Not therapy to fix our moth-eaten minds
Nor forging lifelong relations—
The aim of life is winning at conversations.
P.S. I hid behind the moniker of TINTA since the account was opened on Instagram. Truth be told, this has always been my natural impulse. If I had my way, none of my works would be attributed to me. I write a lot of miserable stuff, which I don’t want attributed to my character. I am proud of my writing, but it is also comfortably the worst of me—where my most cynical, nihilist and antisocial tendencies come to fruit.
For a while, I hoped I could hide behind TINTA forever. Perhaps anonymity is cowardice, but it has always been my impulse. But people tell me there’s nothing sustainable about the moniker strategy—that I must put my name, centralize my content, ensure I take credit for everything in a brutal industry, blah blah blah.
So, briefly, let me introduce myself: I am Neil Nagwekar from Mumbai, India.
I don’t plan on abandoning the moniker TINTA though. Because there is a story behind TINTA, and I think it will take quite some time for it to be completed.
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